Missing the “usual”...

A few of you will probably know that in normal circumstances I would have been spending this week of the year working my arse off for no pay in a gigantic greenhouse in West London - otherwise known as volunteering at the Great British Beer Festival at Olympia. It’s something I’ve done annually since 1998 - so this would have been my 23rd year. Last year we added the duties of looking after the British beer order to our previous roles too - MrEH is a Manager of one of the bars and I am a Deputy Manager. It’s a hot, exhausting, sweaty, physically demanding and above all pretty stressful week, but it’s spent with some of my best friends in the world and as a result, yes, I love it! 

The festival was one of the earliest victims of the pandemic - we reach the stage of increasing commitments both in terms of workload and financial outlay from March onwards - and so as soon as it became apparent that the Covid-19 crisis was going to have a huge impact not just on the U.K. but all over the world, decisions had to be made. At the stage we first talked about it it was becoming very obvious that large gatherings - particularly indoor ones - were going to be banned for a significant period of time, potentially with no end date. With so many “unknown factors” the decision was reluctantly taken by our Festival Organiser Catherine to cancel this year’s event - a hugely brave and tough decision so far in advance, but one which was backed unanimously by the entire working party. A fair few folk on the outside said we’d jumped too soon - that it would “all be over by August” - but as we now know this is far from the case and had we tried to press ahead it would have proved a very costly mistake. 

There’s much joking on social media this week amongst the volunteer staff about all the things we are “virtually doing” - imagining that in fact we were at Olympia as normal. Right now for example, at the time I am writing I would be making final checks on any beers we were expecting to need to put on sale later tonight - Friday evening  is one of our business sessions on the bar - so tasking the cellar team with making sure that anything we would be needing shortly had a tap in it, as well as making decisions about anything that would not be ready to sell this evening, but would instead be tapped last thing tonight or first thing tomorrow ready to see out our final day open to the public. With my other pair of hands (!) I’d also be checking that the two teams under our “control” for want of a better word (actually they are staffed by exceptionally competent and experienced individuals) on the beer order side; Wet stock control and wet stock logistics were happy with their tasks and workloads and also dealing with any problems that needed our attention. 

It feels very strange to be sitting here quietly on the balcony, writing this at a time when usually I’d be incredibly busy - and I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t to a degree missing the bustle and fun that comes along with it. I’m not missing the sore feet - by this stage of the week no matter how much you obey the first rule of GBBF (never stand when you can sit) the heels are always letting out a low yet relentless throb - although this is much improved from the days at Earls Court with it’s unforgiving concrete floor. I confess I am also not missing the stress - today’s 54BPM is the lowest my resting heart rate has been during August since I got my FitBit in 2017! 

There will be a real “Virtual GBBF” happening next month - although aside from putting together some lists of beers which will be featuring in that we have little to do with that as we’re unavailable during the time it’s happening - and we have a plan to get our bar team together for a meet-up at some stage before the end of the year too. For now though, there will be a glass or two raised this evening to “what might have been” and also to all those pals we are missing this week. For now, that’s the best we can do.

Robyn 

Day 74...

Today... A socially distanced walk with my parents and the dog, and an apparently entirely abandoned underground train drive unit, in a field...

We have no idea of the backstory that lead it to be there - as far as we can tell it’s about 80-odd years old though - late 1930’s “P” stock we think. It would have run on the District line, which makes it ironic that where it has ended up is not a million miles from where, until, the mid 90’s, the Central line terminated.

Yes - that’s the dog, looking as though butter simply wouldn’t melt. Best not to be fooled by that expression... She’s not a Poodle although looking a little like one after a “short back and sides” at the groomers earlier in the week. She was clearly delighted to have a couple more people to pay her attention today anyway!

This was today’s other triumph - my latest sourdough attempt. A little flatter than I would ideally like as it stuck to the cloth lining the bowl I proved it in, which pulled out some of the rise as I detached it. The texture however is the best I’ve achieved so far - lots of lovely air holes and a far more open crumb. The taste has been good on all the loaves so far, but it’s definitely getting even better week by week as the starter improves too.

Robyn

Day 67..

The gravestone above belongs to my Great Uncle - Uncle Bob. Probably one of the people who had the greatest impact on my life when I was a child - Bob loved nothing more than spending time with his great Nieces - there are 4 of us in total. I am the oldest, followed by Vicky, Diana and Kelly.  He was a wonderfully kind man, who instilled into me his own love of the countryside - the wildlife, the surroundings - something that now, I’m so grateful for. He loved exploring anywhere unusual, or new - and he also had a secret love of all things related to aviation. One of his ultimate ambitions was to fly on Concorde - something he achieved not that long before his death. This was the reason why when the opportunity arose I seized the chance to have his name put on the tail of a RAF Red Arrows jet - in the last few years he has been literally all over the world on the tail of XX322 - Europe, across the U.K., and throughout the USA & Canada too. Of all of those locations though, probably the one that Bob would have been most pleased about was the display at Swanage Carnival in Dorset a couple of years ago. We holidayed in Swanage several times when I was small - I have wonderful memories of us walking down to see the steam trains in the morning - he would have loved the idea of flying over the place!

It feels really strange to think that we had to say goodbye to Bob over 20 years ago now. I would have loved for him to have met MrEH - they would have got on like a house on fire! Bob would also have loved the adventures I have had in aviation over the past 5 years or so - he would have been excitedly waiting for the next instalment I suspect, and eagerly awaiting the next batch of photos. He would also have loved hearing about our Hebrides trips - somewhere that I’m pretty sure he would have loved!  I was the last family member aside from Auntie D to see him before he died - and I have vivid memories of our last conversation. I suspect Bob knew all too well that he didn’t have long left, but still he was cheerful, interested in hearing all I’d been up to. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have had the 25 years of my life that I did, with him in it.

Robyn

Day 58...

A walk in the sunshine this morning, prior to the strangest lockdown experience yet. The funeral of a family member - being held in the North West so too far for us to attend - streamed via a live video link so that those of us across the rest of the country could watch. Probably 15 - 20 family members present when normally that number would have been 100 or more. Very surreal indeed - although I suspect less so than it would have been a few weeks previously when funeral directors etc would have very likely been wearing full PPE and even fewer people would have been allowed to attend.

Beyond that, it’s been a day of trying to be kind to ourselves - a chat with a good friend this afternoon, time sitting outside with a beer when MrEH finished work for the day, some more time processing photos for me. Taking time to stop and think.

Robyn

The Conscious Consumption Challenge

I'm feeling a little in need of a non activity based challenge at the moment - so far this year a lot of the challenges I've set myself have been around exercise, or specifically running, but this time I wanted something different, and it feels like a while since there has been a food/home/money type challenge on here, so that steered things a bit too.  Also I have recently discovered that Sue formerly of Our New Life In The Country is blogging again - and blogging ALL about challenges, in fact, so I'm further inspired by that!

We've had a few fairly big but very necessary expenditures recently - electrical works on the flat, followed by a long outstanding and fairly chunky bill which has been being argued over becoming payable as the dispute was resolved, and then my 12 year old car started showing signs of some nasty corrosion so needed replacement - and while we bought pre-loved, obviously, to get what we needed going forwards with things like Ultra Low Emission Zones creeping across London over the next few years required a spend of just over £8,000 - ouch! Some of that spend was cobbled together from surplus in our car expense account and elsewhere, and a chunk got put onto a 0% credit card to be paid off slowly over the life of the deal, but there was still a big lump taken out of our emergency fund to cover it. Of course this is why we HAVE an emergency fund - but it still leaves us feeling a little vulnerable as the level in there has fallen so much, and is one of the reasons for the challenge being, at least partially, money focused.

My challenge is not going to be "rule driven" but instead goal driven. Some of it is about using what we have, so saving money on not buying things that aren't needed. Some of it is about making better choices and getting back to the basics on stuff that we used to do, and have drifted out of the habit of a little. All of it is about trying to stop and think, and make better, more conscious, choices not only for our pockets, but also for the environment and even for ourselves.  I intend to scrutinise what we spend again, tackle any frittering that has crept in (not much I don't think, but generally when you start looking, you find odds and ends!) and look to target the money we do spend as well as I possibly can. Any surplus in our joint account at the end of each month is going to be directed at the ISA to start the rebuilding process on our poor depleted EF, so anything saved will speed the process up. Again I have no hard and fast figures in mind about where I want to be with this - indeed the challenge itself isn't really one with a fixed end point, either!

We actually made a start on this process before we went away, when I firstly checked our electricity use against our suppliers projection and discovered that the direct debit could be reduced a bit, and second got on the phone to Sky to tell them (again!) that our TV/Phone/Broadband was too expensive (again!). That resulted in a reduction down to pretty much a "bare bones" package at £33 a month, which does everything we need and more, and saves us a good chunk of money each month. The savings from both of those, rather than being transferred to the "money we didn't know we had" account, as we have traditionally done, will instead be left in the joint account to form part of any surplus that is there at the end of the month, and will then be transferred on to the ISA, where our EF lives.

Several of Sue's challenges on her blog have been about using up stores of goods, and as we seem to have been caught in a never ending cycle of that for a rather long while now that was also a natural focus, so we will be turning our attention to the larder, fridge, freezer and cupboards as well. I'm also intending to do some decluttering - items that have been stored "in case" we need them for too long, food items that either need using or binning, clothes that realistically I'm not going to wear again because in many cases they are too big, books, CD's and DVD's that can go to the charity shop to do someone else a turn for some cheap entertainment. In many ways this is going to be fairly similar to some of the challenges I've done before so don't expect anything ground-breaking here - you might get some reminders of stuff that makes you think "oh yes, I used to do that, too!" though!

Another thing I'm not setting any targets for is how often I update this on here, either - all I'm going to say is that I DO intend to update on here,. So while the blogging mojo is strong, there may be a lot of posts, when it wanes again, or life gets busy, less posts. If that happens though feel free to give me a nudge on twitter (@Essexhebridean) and I'll at least reassure you that I'm still alive!

Robyn

Remembrance...

On Thursday we celebrated my Great Aunt's 90th birthday. Mum, Dad and I, and the cousins arrived en masse with presents, cards, balloons and flowers and made sure she had a lovely afternoon! So why am I mentioning this in a post about remembrance?  Well you see Auntie D grew up without her Father in her life beyond the age of 3. He died in 1932, aged just 39. Her siblings - my Nan and my Great Uncle Ken were 12 and 7 respectively and were both very badly affected by his death - I remember Nan continuing to miss his presence throughout most of her life. My Grandma lived for another 47 years without him by her side and I have no doubt that not a day passed when she didn't think of him, miss him, and wish that things could have been different. My Mum grew up with the family speaking of a "Grandad" who she never knew.

John Henry Stanley - known as Jack - died as a result of being caught in a gas attack during World War 1. He returned home having been awarded the Military Cross for his actions at the Battle of Havrincourt, but was never fit enough to return to his previous occupation as a wood working machinist. In spite of the fact that he died a full 40 years before I was born I'm tremendously proud of my Great Grandad - the whole family are.

We're very good at remembering those who lost their lives fighting for our freedom - and indeed quite rightly so. They are not the only ones who made the ultimate sacrifice, and paid the ultimate price, however. Those who returned home but died later; those with missing limbs, lost sight or hearing, damaged lungs, lingering psychological effects or any other life changing impairments; the families who had to come to terms with someone returning who was very different to the man who went away; the children like Auntie D who never really knew their Father - on this Remembrance day please take a moment to think of them, too.

Lest we forget...

Robyn

Frugal Friday

Three full weeks down and another half to go - and sorry to disappoint anyone who is waiting for me to trip up here but nope, still going to plan!

Shopping last week was done as a spur of the moment decision in Morrisons after MrEH came home from putting fuel in his car with a voucher for 2000 extra "Morrisons More" points on a £20 shop. This is worth £2 so is a decent saving on a shop of that level - it's nice to find a supermarket that are happy to reward those of us who don't spend £40 - £50 every week! As I think I've mentioned before I'm quite a fan of Morrisons and would very much like to have one more locally to us - their quality is good, I like their ethics regarding stocking British meat, and also the less popular cuts. They also make a point of trying to sell off as many parts of the animals as they can with things like Pork Cheeks and lamb bones that you don't always find the other mainstream supermarkets offering. The sustainability of this really appeals to me.  Our shopping list and meal plan was all in place and the shopping came to £20.38. The usual weekly visit to Aldi was also made - £2.54 in there, and unusually a second visit there the following day when I remembered that we needed bread flour - well worth making a special trip as they sell for 65p a bag while ThaT supermarkeT want £1 a bag for the same amount! So an additional £1.95 for the three bags I bought, making our full weekly shopping bill £24.87 - not bad at all! I suspect we will be using Morrisons next week also as I got given a till-spit for a further 2000 extra points so am keen to use that!

The weekend was a quiet and low-spend one for us aside from the shopping. I went for a run on Saturday afternoon but then spent the rest of the day at home, and after a delicious roast dinner on Sunday we headed out on foot for a walk across country to a local pub for just a couple of beers each. it was a lovely if slightly muddy walk exploring a few places locally that we'd heard about but never seen on the way, and we walked back round the road as it was dark by the time we left the pub! It was really nice to have a day where we didn't use either car at all!

I mentioned the roast dinner - this used the Pork Loin Joint from the "Heartier" meat box I bought a few weeks ago. I'm happy to recommend Heartier to anyone - so far the stuff we've had from them has always been great quality and a not at all unreasonable price for the products too. The loin also gave us enough leftovers that we had a tasty stir-fry from it on Wednesday evening - I just tear the cold meat into chunks or strips and then cook off lightly in a wok before adding the veggies and some cooked noodles. The other really tasty meal we had over the weekend was home made pizzas - and these are incredibly frugal as well! I use the bread machine for the dough as it does a far better job of kneading than I ever will. For variation this time I used garlic infused rapeseed oil in the mix and also threw in some dried basil as well - the small as it was rising was heavenly! I then flipped the risen dough out, knocked it back lightly and divided it into two, then each piece into 2 again. 2 portions were popped into bags to go into the freezer and the other two were pressed out to form nice thin bases which crisp up beautifully. For the sauce I use a mixture of 50% ketchup with 50% tomato puree which gives a nice mix of sweetness and tomatoeyness (is that a word?) and also spreads easily onto the uncooked bases. From there it's as simple as choosing your toppings - this time we went for a few thinly sliced mushrooms, the remains of a pack of bacon from the freezer and also from the freezer some of the slices of pepperoni that were given to me when we had toasties for lunch in the office a few weeks back. I then scattered the tops with a ripped up ball of T's value mozzarella (always rip, never slice, as that way you get a great variation in thickness on the pieces and it goes far further across your pizza too!) The pizzas were then popped into a moderately hot oven along with a pack of Aldi Garlic butter doughballs (I *think* I paid 69p for these and they were every bit as tasty as the more premium brands!) and taken out when the bases were crisp on the edges and the cheese had started to bubble and brown. Gorgeous!

Spending review for this week then:
Planned:
- Accommodation booked for a planned few days away later in the year. We weighed up a holiday-let -v- a budget hotel and in the end found a holiday let for the same price - this will save us money as it's got its own parking (Hotel would have meant another £22 in parking costs) AND will mean that we can prepare our own breakfasts and packed lunches for the days we're there rather than having to rely on eating out for all our meals.
- £7 for the gym for me on Wednesday
- I topped up my car with fuel when I saw it at a good price in Lincoln last Friday
Unplanned:
The beers on Sunday afternoon

I mentioned that trip away above - and this has been the main thrust of our financial planning this week, in fact. We have a bit of a plan to try to visit as many RSPB reserves across the country as we can manage, and there were a couple up north that have been fixtures on our "to do" list for a while now - Bempton Cliffs and Blacktoft Sands. We've found accommodation a short drive from both reserves, and are planning to loop in catching up with a friend while up there as well as visiting a favourite pub which I've used a lot but MrEH has not yet made it to, on the way. We're fans of having our own space when we're away for more than a couple of nights, as we've found that often it costs little more than a budget hotel while giving us a lot more freedom, and saving us money as mentioned above as we're not forced into cafe breakfasts every day of a stay and also have easy options to throw together packed lunches to take out, and to bring back a takeaway or cook something tasty and local that we've bought on our travels rather than eating out each evening. It also means that in the event of a day where the weather is simply too poor to do much we can more comfortably decide to just stay in, and more easily dry wet clothes if we decide to brave it and go out! We're RSPB Members so entry to & parking at the reserves will be free to us, and we also plan to do some exploring around the market town that we're staying in, including the market itself which apparently happens every Saturday. There's also some lovely (and some very cheesy!) seaside within a short distance that we'll try to get to. Food will be our main spend and we're planning to eat out in the evenings in some of the town's excellent pubs - this will be budgeted from our personal spending money, and our "fun" budget while the cost of the accommodation is covered by the money that doesn't get spent in March on Council Tax & Water rates. Diesel will come from our regular monthly fuel budget. I will set aside any Morrisons vouchers we acquire ahead of the trip to cover some of the spend for breakfast goods and lunches. There will no doubt be some tea & cake incidents...again from our personal spending money. It won't be a cheap weekend, but it will be planned for and within a budget, and thanks to the work we put in in years gone by on clearing our mortgage and paying off all debt, the ability to do stuff like this is there for us. It's one of the good things when life becomes more about "experiences" than "stuff"!  

Robyn

Frugal Friday

My intention is that for the duration of #FrugalFebruary I will do a Friday update each week focusing on a particular aspect of the stuff I'm looking at along with some more general notes on the challenge as a whole. Now regular readers will be fully aware that my intentions on the blogging front do not always meet my achievements so we'll have to wait and see how this goes - but for now, let's assume that's the way it will go!

I reckon that my very first task for this month needs to be to sort out the food aspect of things. As you probably know for meal planning purposes I work on the basis of planning evening meals and having an established set of foods that cover lunches and breakfasts. For us, that works - breakfasts are generally a piece of fruit or cereal in the week,and toast or porridge at weekends. Lunches on working days are either a filled roll or a sandwich and some pieces of fruit, MrEH also takes a bag of crisps most days. Non working days are often soup, but sometimes vary depending on what I have that needs using. Having those guidelines in place means that it's one aspect less of planning things out that needs to be considered, and knowing that we have the right stuff lined up saves on the risk of "needing to nip out for a sandwich". MrEH sorts out lunches, I sort out main meals, on weekdays, as a general rule. We budget for one takeaway a month but for this month (and last, as it happens!) we're not necessarily going to have that. My aim for the month is to thin down the freezer, use up some stuff that's been languishing in there for a while, and make use of what we have as far as possible.

Meal planning and good shopping habits is in my view one of the most important subjects for anyone wanting to live life more carefully from both a food waste and a financial point of view to master. Once you have the hang of it, your bills drop considerably. Cooking from scratch is undoubtedly another - kudos to all you parents out there passing the message on to the next generation - being able to feed yourself on a fraction of what others can manage? That's a super-cool skill-set! (Not least as it frees up more money for beer which I believe is a key consideration for your average student!)  Whether you've emerged from Christmas feeling as though your bank account has been plundered or the New Year has provoked a lightbulb moment on wanting shot of credit card debt, then tackling the grocery spend can be a fabulous way of boosting your finances and uncovering money you never realised you could have spare.

First job is to work out what you have - so grab a notebook and a pen. Initially your aim is to discover what you have in your fridge, freezer, cupboards and any larder, pantry or storecupboard you might use. Storecupboard space is a fantastic thing to have by the way, as it allows for the possibility of buying foodstuffs in bulk where this will save money. Once you have your list, then the next priority is to make a further list (or use a highlighter on the first one) of anything that needs using up - veg in the bottom of the fridge starting to go a bit bendy? Half a packet of bacon that's only got a day to go on its use-by date? A packet of bread bought for toast with only a couple of slices gone? The last few eggs in the box? All that stuff needs to get dealt with as a priority as otherwise it ends up in the bin, and that is like rolling up £10 notes and feeding them through a shredder. That bread - freeze it, then you can just take out a slice or two as needed. The bacon might also work to freeze - separate it into the number of rashers you'd use together and interleave with greaseproof or plastic film. While eggs and veg can be frozen I'm always a fan of just getting on and using them - so think about whether they will work together for a frittata for the next meal you have to cook? Otherwise there is always the soup option for the veg of course - home made soup is one of the quickest and easiest things imaginable, honestly!  Get into the habit of each week, before you shop, evaluating the stuff you have that needs using and incorporating that into your plan and you'll quickly find that both your rubbish bin and your food spend will slim down dramatically. Remember - "Best before" means that it's still safe to eat after that date but may change in taste, colour or smell. "Use by" needs a far more careful assessment and if you are in ANY doubt then bin it - I'm not getting too far into here but let's leave it that you have eyes and a nose - use both and if either say they're not sure then don't risk eating, please! (This applies to stuff that's within date too - don't just blindly assume!)

OK - got your full list and your "use me up" one as well? Next steps then is to start thinking about meals that you can make using entirely - or mostly - the ingredients you already have. Obviously prioritise the things that are in urgent need of using.  I've made a start on ours for the next month already, with my aim being to spend as little possible in the supermarkets, and so far it looks a little like this:
- "All day breakfast" to use remaining eggs, plus some bits from the freezer that have been there a while
- Batch-cook bolognese sauce - each pack of mince will make 2 x double portions and this will use up some onions and some carrots needing attention, plus the final 2 peppers
- Stew - I have diced beef in the freezer.
- Pasta bakes using veg to bulk out the dish and incorporating bacon and cheese for an extra pop of flavour. (A really good way of using up veg too!)
- liver and onions with mash (yum!)
- Hearty salads made more "wintery" by adding cooked mushrooms or peppers and with the centrepiece being some rather tasty smoked mackerel we got at the Good Food Show in December and froze when we got home
- a pasta dish with smoked chicken - again from the GFS and frozen, and just a single breast left so this dish will help it stretch to feed two of us.
- sausage and bean casserole
- Couscous salads with chickpeas, veggies and usually something like Halloumi as the star of the show

Initially it's best to just try to plan a week ahead - anything more gets more challenging. Cross items off your "what I have" list as you use  them, and make sure you revisit those "need using" items weekly. Your shopping list is of course those items that you will need to complete your chosen meals, storecupboard items that you will use up (we usually replace rice, pasta, couscous etc when we open the previous bag) and of course your routine bread, fruit etc.  For vegetables as far as possible plan around what is seasonal and thus generally cheapest. If you live alone frozen veg might work better for you than needing to eat - for example, cauliflower for a week. Personally I LOVE frozen sliced peppers and frozen sweetcorn to have in the freezer as it means I can just add a handful to a dish without needing to have fresh in or open a tin. If you have a discount supermarket nearby then look out for their "Super 6" and "Pick of the Week" offers as those can be brilliant building blocks for your week's meals too - this week Aldi will be dictating some of our fruit - I'll be buying apples elsewhere and these will be British, but it's tricky to get a lot of home-grown fruit at this time of year so my citrus will come from Aldi, along with almost certainly plums (crumble - yum!) and blueberries (to have with yogurt or in porridge at the weekend). MrEH may well put in a request for pears too. Lidl meanwhile will offer me British Leeks at a great price - and as I will be in the area anyway I'll almost certainly grab a pack or two of those. I also have a quick scout about online to see what is particularly good value and this influences where I shop each week to a degree. Write your shopping list, and shop according to it - try not to stray even if an offer looks tempting - oddly enough all the really good offers tend to come around again and again, and regardless of how cheap something is, if you won't use it then it's no bargain at all!

For so many people cracking overspending on groceries can make a HUGE difference to your budget - it's one area where you can see an immediate saving too of course. Why not establish what you've spent previously and then set yourself a budget to come in at a certain level less, to start with? And then any savings you make could be paid off a credit card perhaps, or stashed aside as the start of an "emergency fund". And if you have any great tips for cutting your food spend or planning meals, please do pop them in as a comment below!

Robyn.

Frugal Friday...

I was reminded by Sue over at Our New Life in the Country of the number of folk busily counting up sealed pot savings at this time of year. I assume the tradition of this happening in December originates from people using the money to spend on Christmas? That seems logical I suppose, although that's not where ours goes, but I can see for many folk the money they amass in their sealed pot might well pay for Christmas presents or some of the other additional expenditure that gets accrued at this time of year.

Some folk have a "literal" sealed pot - a jar or tin with a slot cut in the lid and the top all sealed up to avoid the temptation to dip in. We prefer to use our family of Pigs for our "coin" savings - one for my £2 coins, 1 for random change, and another for "roadkill" - the money we find discarded in the streets as we go about our business. Oh, and the sheep - he eats 5p's, obviously. Our "Sealed pot" though is in fact a virtual pot - and it's where we sweep the odd pounds and pennies from our bank accounts away to, along with cashback earned on things bought jointly, and interest earned on any of the bank accounts too. not much physical counting involved in that come 1st December, obviously, but no paying bags of cash into the bank required, either. Each time we log into our accounts through the year we simply round down the current accounts to the nearest £5 and then transfer the relevant amount to the VSP account. It means that our accounts stay at nice round figures (which pleases my slight OCD tendancies) and also builds to a nice little sum of "extra" money which can fund - or at least part fund - something exciting.

Although we don't use the money for specific Christmas related things - I've always stuck to 1st December as the start of the new "VSP Year" - I started saving this way after seeing a challenge on the MoneySavingExpert forums some years ago - that was the date they used, so I did the same, and I've just kept on that way ever since.  Both last year and this, the money saved has gone towards helping to pay for our Christmas trip to the Hebrides - this year it will be covering car hire costs, food and any general spending money, and as it totalled a satisfying £475, it will easily cover those costs! It's a great way of funding extra fun and all from money that would otherwise just get frittered, or eventually swept over to our long term savings accounts.

Our savings Pigs (And sheep!) all get counted up in the Spring - as those have always been used for our main holiday, and that has traditionally always been somewhere between Easter & June, so this worked out to be a good time to do the count. Like Sue & her Lovely Hubby we also refuse to relinquish 10% of our hard-earned to the manufacturers of a machine that will count it for us - instead we sit ourselves down and count the lot between us, then MrEH takes it painstakingly 5 bags at a time to pay it into the Building Society and it gets transferred across to the holiday savings account from there.

The other way we still save which was also something we started when we were working to pay off the mortgage is the "money we didn't know we had" - this is made up from savings made when utility bills or similar are haggled down, and the little bit extra from my salary that doesn't have a job elsewhere. Initially that was the money that we would periodically transfer across to pay off against the mortgage, now it again tends to fund the "extras" that we can justify - we're revisiting the island of Lundy with a group of pals next year - not cheap but a fantastic thing to do - and this account will be paying for that. It means that we can say "Yes please" to fun stuff without feeling guilt about raiding our longer term savings.  If someone was paying off debt money saved this way could be paid off a credit card balance, or set aside to pay a loan down early perhaps, it can be a great way of charting savings made on household bills too!

Robyn

Everyone Else is Taken...!

Fit in! Join in! Be like everyone else! (Or not...)

There's a huge amount of pressure to conform, to do what everyone else does, to be "normal". Most people probably don't even give any thought to "normal" - they just want to be considered it. We're not born wanting to be normal, wanting to emulate what others do in their lives - watch any group of small children playing together and yet, they'll copy, but they'll also be totally happy to say "Nah - that's not me!" if that then doesn't fit in well with what they want to do. Then we hit school, and good old peer pressure comes into play in earnest, and to be honest, it never really goes away.

Sometimes wanting to emulate others can be good - seeing a friend who's a fabulous cook, for example, and thinking "wow - I'd love to learn to cook like that!" has benefits to your everyday life. A friend who's fabulous at photography can make you push yourself to think a bit more about your own shots, and how you can improve them. Other times it can be less positive - we've all seen that person who is so anxious to please that they will mould themselves to whoever they're spending time with - not quite "Single White Female" standard, but equally creepy to watch, after a while. Suddenly they develop an interest in things that they'd previously never mentioned (but if challenged, will always manage to look astonished and claim that they'd "always" been interested in X, Y or Z!"), their tastes in music and TV change, and they will fervently agree with whatever their new role model says, regardless of their true views - determined to not risk upsetting this person who, mostly, will be a far stronger and more dominant character.  It can be a dangerously easy trap to fall into as well - at least to a degree - after all it's far easier to agree with someone than to present a contradictory view, isn't it, especially if you lack the confidence to deal with a scathing and dismissive reaction from the other person if you do suggest that you feel differently. We all like to appear agreeable after all. Ultimately though, seeing someone like that can also be quite painful to watch, not least as invariably after a time the dominant personality will nearly always get bored with their resident "yes man" and run for the hills. A true friend will like you for yourself, and will be interested in your views and opinions - they won't shout you down or ridicule you for daring to voice them.

I wrote my most recent Frugal Friday entry on the subject of choices - how we all make them, and how sometimes, people make assumptions about WHY we've made them. Either way though - we all have a right to freedom of choice in so far as it doesn't harm anyone else, and those choices should be respected by others regardless of whether we agree with them, or not. "I wouldn't have done it that way but if it suits you, then great!" is fine "Well that's just stupid, you should have done it this way..." less so. Mr EH and have chosen to live a life without debt - we're not comfortable with it, don't like feeling as though we owe anything to anyone, and when in the future we choose to take on a mortgage again, we'll deal with it in the same way we did the first one - by making sacrifices, and overpaying as much as we can until it's gone. I have chosen to take on a 0% Credit Card for my new camera and phone, bought last year - not because I hadn't saved the money for these - I had - but because that money serves me better sitting in an interest bearing savings account. I worked for it in the first place, now IT is working for ME (It's not working all that hard, granted, but it's the principle that counts, here!). The card was opened with a 22 month interest free period but will be gone long before that, and should the worst happen, they money is there to clear any outstanding balance immediately. For the past 9 years we've adopted a way of life which means that if the money is not in the bank for something we want, we simply have to wait for it until we've saved up - and that works well for us, we're happier for it by far. Sometimes our choices are to do without, do with less, or do with something different, down to cost, other times they are made for other reasons - the one thing above all that - halleluiah - our original financial choices meant, is that we are no longer ruled by cost in all things - we consider necessity, and quality of life first. I still feel that one of the most powerful things I learned in the early days of our voluntarily frugal journey was that we don't need "stuff" to make us happy - breaking the habit of buying on impulse has probably saved us as much as anything else we've done over the years.

As long as the things you're doing are safe & legal, and don't hurt others, don't let anyone judge you, or raise an eyebrow at you for doing them - if they suit you, and your way of living, then that's the key thing. If someone DOES try to make you feel as though you're strange for making the choices you have, then maybe it's time to bear in mind the old adage - "Them as matter, don't mind, and them as mind, don't matter". Old it may be but there's a lot of truth there. Be true to yourself first, and worry what others think after - or at least try to, that one is a learning curve for me as much as anyone. If someone chooses to judge you for making a choice about something, then that says more about them, than about you, and learning to be comfortable enough in your own skin to say "Each to their own, eh" and shrug off hurtful comments is a powerful thing. Be yourself - everyone else is taken!

Robyn

Frugal Friday...

As we started to plan for getting the kitchen done, it suddenly occurred to us - we have an awful lot of stuff in that kitchen, and before too long, it's all going to have to be stored somewhere! Quite a scary thought, to be honest. But it didn't take too much time for us to realise that it was relatively easy to turn that into a mini frugal-food-challenge!

So, for the past couple of weeks I've been focusing the meal plan around using up contents of the cupboards, fridge and freezer. As and when it comes to time to start clearing the room we'll be switching on Freezer 2 and transferring the contents of freezer 1 over to there, but we will also need space in there to store "home made ready meals" that we can easily heat up in the microwave while we're without full cooking facilities. Things like Chilli and bolognese are going to feature I think, and we'll have the camping stove as well which will give us a single ring "hob".

For the moment though it's all about using what we have - so the first thing was to go through the cupboards so we knew what we DID actually have. Some things took us by surprise a little - the pack of sugar free jelly crystals that went out of date in (I think) 2008, for example. We can be quietly confident that there is nothing much natural in those, as they smelled, looked and tasted exactly as normal! 5 tins of red kidney beans also came as a little bit of a surprise, along with 8 cans of baked beans. Yes. 8. No I have no idea.  Other things less so - half a jar of smoked peanut butter which never quite hit the spot on toast. About half a pack of pudding rice - it takes an AWFUL long while to use up a bag of pudding rice you know! Quite a bit of dried fruit - that's a conscious choice to have though - I like to know if I want to make flapjacks or similar, I've got the ingredients to hand.

Sometimes "using things up" can lead you to discovering new ideas that for whatever reason you hadn't thought of before. A few rashers of bacon fried and stirred into baked beans for example enlivened a standard jacket potato up no end. It's not that it's anything new or revolutionary, just simply that I'd never thought of combining the things like that that. That peanut butter has been added to Thai style veggie curries  - also using up coconut milk - to turn them into a sort of satay flavour - really tasty! I've also tried one recipe that I've talked about for ages and never previously got around to trying - Clafoutis - essentially a batter pudding, traditionally with cherries in it. We had a lurking can of black cherries donated by a friend who bought them then remembered she doesn't like cherries! A resounding success - and rather than a batter, as such, the recipe I followed gives almost more of a set custard.

Rice pudding with dried cranberries added, finished off with flaked almonds on top to toast for the final 30 minutes of cooking was another success. Apologies for the shoddy photo. I was anxious to get on and eat it!

The reward for this effort is already starting to show, both in diminishing food cupboards, and in diminishing food bills too - so it's definitely working on all levels. I'll be carrying on for the foreseeable future as I work through things, it's requiring some thought when it comes to the shopping list as I have to remember to add those "storecupboard" ingredients that have already been used, but only in the quantity that they are required for the upcoming week's meal plan!

Robyn

The Next Step...

The next stage of our refurbishment of our flat is now getting underway. It always amazes people that we've lived here for 13 years and had not done anything major to it until the bathroom was ripped out and replaced last year. I guess that to an extent, we felt that we ought to "really" own the place before we started sorting out the inside to any great extent. Although we were still a few months away from paying off the mortgage altogether when we had the bathroom done, that really had reached the point where getting it sorted out was a need rather than a want, and as we had the money to do it saved, we chose to go ahead at that stage.


While "liveable" - we'd be the first to agree that it's not necessarily been the easiest of choices to actually live with some of it. The kitchen is now starting to tip across to becoming a "need" rather than a "want" to have done. It's sometimes colder than it might be in the place because we've got a number of blown double-glazing units.  The carpets - particularly the hallway - are showing serious signs of wear. We're heartily fed up with the rather 1980's feel to the hallway - think artex and a pine dado rail...  BUT - having waited to get all these things done now means we'll be able to do them as we want, and hopefully buy a quality that will last for a good long while. We will also not be taking on any debt to get the works done now, as a result of having waited.

So - the first part of the plan was to get the kitchen window and door replaced - the double glazing was blown in the door, and the window was single glazed meaning that that the room was freezing and the window was running with water pretty much permanently. So on Friday they were ripped out and replaced with a brand new super-insulated door and window. we've chosen a window with 2 openers on one pane for the simple reason that this brings opening windows into my reach - the old unit was a devil to reach to open for a shorty like me! The door opens outward making it easier to access the balcony to read the gas meter, water plants etc.  At the same time we have had our old wooden framed aluminium front door replaced as well - really the only change we are able to make to the direct "kerb appeal" of the place. That is already making the place warmer, and more secure.

Plans for the kitchen are also going forwards - we've had a measuring & planning meeting, and are now waiting for a plan and a drawing to come through. We've found a paint colour we like for the walls - a soft fresh green. We've chosen our units - slab style cream gloss - and the handles that will go on them. We've decided to go with the same tiles on the floor that we used in the bathroom - not only will it give continuity through the flat but we really like them! The splashback behind the worktop is going to be done in cream subway-style tiles. We think we've found the oven and dishwasher we want. We've learned that integrated fridge/freezers only seem to come as a 55cm wide option. Which is somewhat annoying. I have to admit though we're finding the process quite difficult - and until last night I couldn't quite work out why. The bathroom was easy by comparison - we felt confident about both the design and working out what would fit. The layout for that was prescribed - it's a small room, the bath will only fit one way, and the rest kind of followed on from there - the layout we had previously worked, and so we stuck with it. The kitchen has left us feeling baffled though - seemingly whatever we tried to make work, wouldn't. We're tremendously limited for worktop space currently - so doing anything that would reduce this further is not an option. The sink can only go in one place. We want to stick with gas for cooking. And suddenly last night the blindingly obvious hit us. The layout we have in the kitchen at the moment works superbly - cooking is a pleasure as everything flows from my worktop position - the tap is just to my right, my knives are in the block right in front of me, the hob and oven just to my left, and the fridge just a couple of steps away behind me. So why do we feel we "have" to change it? If it ain't broke, why try to fix it? And, at the end of the day, in a small space you do have to work with what you have. I'd LOVE a fabby range style cooker - in fact I'd possibly love it slightly more than I do MrEH, so it may be a good thing that we don't have room for one. ;-) Now all that has sunk in, it all feels slightly less daunting and scary, slightly more manageable. The one small tweak to layout will be to switch the positions of the dishwasher and a base unit so that the dishwasher is slightly closer to the plumbing, giving less of a run on the drainage.

Now it's all about the small stuff - thinking about any ways we can increase storage, checking everything is accurate on the plan, seeing if there is any way at all of increasing the space available. A good friend is also going to look over the plans for us - to see if he can think of anything that we've missed, or that might work better. An extremely keen cook, not only has he fitted kitchens for himself in the past he's done a fair few for other people too so he's a great person to have on-side. Our builder (you may remember him from the bathroom exploits) Dave is also ace - not a lot phases him and we're leaving things like suggestions for clever lighting to him to come up with as he's great on stuff like that. Rather as with the bathroom we'll be learning as we go along to a degree - but also learning from mistakes we made there. The next few weeks will be focusing on using up as much in the way of food items as can from fridge, freezer, cupboards and larder - in fact look out for a Frugal friday post on that subject soon. The additional freezer space created will then be filled with home made "ready meals" which can quickly and easily be heated up using just the microwave - we don't intend to spend the time the kitchen takes to do living off takeaways and meals out!

Watch this space for updates on how we get on!

Robyn

A simple supper & guilty pleasures...

I love spending time with MrEH - he's my best friend, as well as anything else, and we are, and have always been, quite happy in each others company for as much time as we have. Equally though we're not joined at the hip - we have different interests as well as those which we enjoy together, during the summer I have my aviation stuff, during the winter he plays rugby. Yes obviously it would be helpful if these two things overlapped on time, but life's not like that, is it! So we're happy to each let the other go off and "do their thing" - sometimes I go to rugby with him, occasionally he comes to an airshow thing with me. He gets on fine with my airshow gang, I get on fine with his rugby crowd. The rugby thing isn't just limited to the season when he's actually playing, either, as there are regular training sessions throughout the year, too, meaning that a couple of nights a week, generally speaking, we need to sort out meals that will work for us individually, rather than eating together.

For me, those evenings are a chance to just cook something really simple but tasty (MrEH usually defaults to an omelette or pasta when he gets home, I never quite know what time he will be in and this is quick and easy for him to rustle up) - often something which he would be less keen on - and then catch up on my "guilty pleasure" TV - Casualty, Escape to the Country, Amazing Spaces... I'm not massively a TV person, but do often have it on in the background while I'm processing photos - so when we're both in generally he will choose what we watch - which suits me fine!

On the food front all sorts of things might tick my boxes, and it will partly depend on what we have to use up. If we have posh bread left over from the weekend then it might be a big pile of fluffy scrambled eggs alongside (never on - soggy food, eurgh!) toast. Or sometimes a tin of soup - ThaT SupermarkeT's own Lentil and Bacon at 45p a can, for example. Yum. (And a guilty pleasure in itself!) Sometimes a bowl of salad with tuna, or small bits of bacon fried to JUST starting to crisp. And sometimes, like Monday night, the "odds and ends to use up" don't lend themselves to any of the above....2 chicken drumsticks rescued from the freezer. A few mushrooms, a handful of rocket, a single egg...and that is when I put into the play the meal that an acquaintance on MSE always referred to as a "Buddha Bowl". Now obviously as soon as you add meat or poultry you're immediately swerving this away from any sort of authenticity, but sometimes that doesn't matter, you know?

A quick Google search confirms that a traditional "Buddha Bowl" is essentially a dish containing a grain (or at least a starch of some kind), a protein and vegetables, usually with the addition of some kind of savoury sauce. I often end up forgetting the sauce though because the rest all smells so DAMNED good by the time I think about it. Last night was one of those occasions. I chose couscous as my base - easy as you like - a scoop in the base of my bowl, cover with the same quantity of boiling water, whack a plate on the top and leave it to steam which you deal with the rest.  I thickly sliced the mushrooms, I wanted chunks rather than slices, and popped those to cook off gently in a splash of rapeseed oil while I stripped the meat off the drumsticks. Once the mushroom was soft and turning golden I added in the chicken, and stirred it all about until it was thoroughly heated through. A handful of rocket was dumped on top and I turned my attention back to the couscous which was nicely plumped up by this time. A pinch of seaweed infused sea salt and a knob of chipotle butter were stirred through to give it a bit of punch, before the chicken, mushroom & rocket were thrown on the top, juices and all. The finally touch was a just-cooked single egg omelette cut into strips to top it off. Joy in a bowl. even more joyous as the whole lot was cooked in one pan, plus the bowl I ate it from. 4 items were dirtied in the making of this dish - no, hang on, 5, I forgot the fork I ate with! My kind of cooking!

Had I thought about a dressing in good time I might have gone for something like a teaspoon of tahini let down with lemon juice, and then added a sprinkle of sesame seeds for crunch. A vinaigrette with grain mustard added maybe. Or Rapeseed oil, lime juice and finely chopped coriander leaves. (I'm making myself hungry now!) Perhaps next time I should make the sauce first, while the kettle is boiling?!

Do you have a "go to" simple supper dish for nights like that?

Robyn

New Challenges...

I have to confess that on Saturday I woke up feeling a bit "meh" - after all the excitement over paying off the mortgage, it all felt like a bit of an anti climax after it was actually done. Mostly, friends just didn't quite "get" it - with a few exceptions who couldn't have been more delighted for us. One person I would formerly have described as a very close friend who I KNOW saw the text mentioning it (and had she for some reason not, would definitely have seen it on Twitter) chose not only to totally ignore it, but hasn't even mentioned it since - that sort of thing makes you re-evaluate, you know? We all have things going on in our lives, but I cannot imagine one SINGLE circumstance where I would let momentous news like that go without giving heartfelt congratulations to the person concerned, no matter how much there was a little bit of me sitting saying "why not me?". Hey ho, there's nowt so queer as folk, eh?

I said before that I was always just a teeny bit scared about this point - and I guess now I can say why - people just aren't meant to get to 44 and find themselves mortgage free, are they? The thing I was a little bit worried about was exactly that - that it would change the way people saw me....saw us, in fact. People don't see the hard work and effort that has gone in, the tears that were shed when I lost such a massive chunk of my income back in 2010 - and we genuinely had visions of all that work falling by the wayside (For a while I wasn't fit enough mentally to go back to even part-time work - it was at that stage that we took the decision that going forward I would only work 4 days a week, which has of course also impacted on my earning potential), the times when we've had to say "Oh no, I'm sorry, we're not about" because there just wasn't enough money to allow for us to join in with what was being proposed, or more recently the times I've had to sit mentally working out what "cheap" option I can eat off a menu so I still have enough money to stand my round of drinks because my personal spending money was so limited. Bottom line is, there is NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT THESE PEOPLE - so there you go, it's out there, I'm letting it go. (But, as I've said, with certain re-evaluations of where people stand in my life and where I clearly stand in theirs). I'm not angry - it's just hurtful that I can get a warmer, more excited and congratulatory reaction from people out here in blogland than from someone I actually choose to spend time with.

So - new challenges are required. I can't imagine, now, us not having a "goal" to work to in certain areas! The first is purely financial and is to rebuild the lump sum we've just paid out to clear the mortgage as quickly as possible. We're making a few minor tweaks in what money goes where, and allowing for  a "standard of living" increase to occur - "inflation" if you like. We've always been careful to make sure that our food choices are healthy and as far as possible, ethical, but we're now aiming to be able to buy better cuts of meat when we choose to, and more things like fresh fish, and shellfish, which we love! Being able to have that stuff regularly not just as a treat will be fantastic. Our savings are now spread over three main accounts - 2 regular savers and an ISA - as well as our "routine" savings pots which allow us to budget for regular expenses. I'll post more about the money stuff in a Frugal Friday post, I think.

The second is a bit of a decluttering challenge - I've done these before, including a whole YEAR of decluttering back in 2013 - but the time feels right to do it again. I'm not doing this in any sort of structured way this time, just "taking it as it comes" and aiming to free up space. My wardrobe needs tackling, and I want to look through DVD's, and books, too. It'll be done in 15 minute bursts as that is a method that works well for me. It'll be nice to be able to get clothes in my wardrobe without having to fight with what's already in there!

Thirdly is an attack on our well stocked larder and storecupboard. We're intending to get our kitchen rebuilt later this year, and as we already know from the upheaval of the bathroom rebuild back in the spring, living in a flat does mean that this sort of work around the place causes a certain amount of upheaval which simply has less of an impact if you live in a house...and thinking about how much storage was needed to house everything from the bathroom, the thought of having to empty our kitchen into the spare room, or front room, or wherever is just terrifying! SO - the intention is to start thinking about what can be used up, with the rationale on attacking the storecupboard as well being simply this: The more free space there is in the storecupboard, the more stuff from the larder it will house when the time comes. Simple. The first stage on this is, I think, to go through the larder and work out what is in there that can simply be used, and what there is if anything that has been overlooked too long, and needs disposal. I'm hoping there's not too much of that, though, food waste makes me very cross. My bullet (ish) journal contains a rolling list of foodstuffs that I know need using, and when I do my meal plans for the week I take these into account. That helps stop us take our "eyes off the ball". While doing that we will also refill any of the containers in there that need it, and I'll establish whether there is anything in there that can be better and more tidily stored. When the kitchen is redone the inside of the Larder will be getting fully re-tiled/painted so we need to consider how best to store things from then on. I might post back here about this challenge, we'll see.

Robyn

Frugal Friday...

The summer is such a difficult time of year for me to even attempt to keep up the frugal thing. In everyday life we still carry on as normal - using the washing machine and dishwasher overnight, and showering when we first get up to make use of the night-rate on the electric. Buying basic or budget brands where they are are good as branded. Driving economically. Shopping around for things. All that and more. BUT at that time of year I'm away almost every weekend photographing those Little Red Jets, and that always involves a lot of driving, and often an overnight stay, and buying food while I'm away...However it also involves a lot of fun, and some huge laughs, and so it's well worth (for me) me spending pretty much all my disposable income on it, during these few months!

As ever, there are ways and means of cutting the cost down a bit, too. Hotels generally get booked as soon as we have even an inkling of which shows we're likely to want to do - booked through one of the booking websites via Topcashback on a "cancellable" basis, and pricechecked through a site like Trivago as well. If I'm booking for myself alone I'll also often look at booking a little further out, and travelling in to the show as this can often save a fortune. If there is an option to use public transport then I always see if that will work out economically if it's practical to do so. For group meals out in the evenings after some of the shows we tend to default to Wetherspoons pubs if there is one - the food is reliable even if not gourmet standard, and in a group which generally includes a couple of real ale drinkers, a Guinness fan, a gin queen and a wine-a-holic, it's great to be able to go somewhere that we know we'll each be able to get our tipple of choice without being charged through the nose for it. We're all in the same boat mostly as far as needing to keep costs sensible, so these measures mean we can have more fun, for less dosh - a no-brainer! I set aside money through the winter months to cover the cost of my summer entertainment, and this works well for me - I can't justify running up costs on credit cards etc - I'm just not comfortable doing that as the shadow of "what happens if I can't pay it back" would always be hanging over me spoiling the fun.

The things that tend to slip by me during the busy time of year are things like meal-planning - I have a basic fund of meals that can be rustled up very quickly indeed, but that are still healthy and above all tasty. On the day of writing for example dinner will be some delicious Norfolk Pink new potatoes, boiled to tender and then gently tossed in a pan with chunks of bacon and courgette, a drizzlwe of good rapeseed oil, and served up with some fresh sweetcorn bought in Norfolk over the weekend. It'll be delicious, plates will be cleared, but it doesn't appear on ANY meal plan, anywhere! Those same potatoes (I bought a 5kg sack from our favourite campsite at the weekend) will feature a lot over the next few weeks - and at a cost of £3 for that 5kg sack that's unquestionably a frugal way of eating!

I've got a few ideas that I may try to put in place over the winter to see if next summer can be just a bit more organised on this front. The first of these is a rotating 3 or 4 week meal plan - not necessarily something rigid with "this meal on that day" but more a rough weekly "fund" of recipes - some quick to prepare, others a little more time-consuming. So as a rough guideline, a salad day, a pasta day, an egg day, a veggie day, plus options like stews or soups. The first step top this is going to be to go back over old meal plans I think and get together a full list of the sorts of meals we're happy to eat in each category - then from there work them into rough sets of 5 days. 2 days a week are complicated by MrEH having rugby training - meals need to either be very quick for him to prep when he gets in (omelettes for example), or something that I can prep and just leave in the fridge for him (salads fit this category brilliantly!). This is going to need a lot of planning and thinking about I guess - and at the moment I'm finding it slightly daunting. I'll keep you posted!

Robyn

Playing by the rules...

...some people are just really good at "doing things properly" - you know what I mean? They are the ones whose clothes are always ironed, who have proper organised "date nights" with their partners, whose homes are tidy, meal plans magneted onto their very tidy (and clean!) fridge doors and the lid to the recycling bin actually closes... Then there's the rest of us. Now I don't know about you, but I've never been good at sticking to the rules. As a child, colouring in, my attention invariably wandered and I went outside the lines...in fact, that sums up my life really - pretty bright, and colourful, and fun, but a lot of that bright, colourful fun just manages to sneak outside the lines and look a bit untidy. *Sigh*. I've spent years feeling I should be "that person" - the one who tidies their winter clothes away neatly in April and brings them out again in October. The person who knows precisely where to find things, and never forgets a birthday (sorry to all those who either haven't had cards from me this year, or got them very, VERY late. Again) Some of those things I'd even like to achieve - a tidy house would be my dream, but unfortunately I live with MrEH and this comes lower on his priority list than it does on mine. Plus I'm actually a bit rubbish about keeping up the sort of routines that enable true tidiness, "stuff" just seems to creep in. I'm reminded here of a conversation with a good friend of mine, in connection with a planned move of accommodation that he was preparing for - he was complaining about the amount of stuff he seemed to have accumulated, to which I replied "I had you down as a bit of a neat-freak?" "Yeah I am!" he responded "...but I'm a hoarder, too!" Once I stopped laughing I realised that yes, I can identify with that!

Regardless of how organised I can be through the quieter, winter months, things tend to get away from me again during the summer. When I'm away most weekends doing brilliantly fun airshow stuff, and then spending most of my weekday evenings sorting out the photos from those weekends, boring stuff like putting clothes away and (ugh) dusting tend to get pushed into the background. I start the year writing everything into a diary...dates, birthdays, anniversaries, you name it, it will go in there. By mid July though? Less so, and by August I'm a stressy heap of disorganised forgetfulness all over again. and that just isn't good. Oh and I beat myself up for not managing to keep on top of everything, which just adds to the stressiness...yes, life in my head is a complete ball sometimes!

Is there another way (she wondered, out loud)? well yes, I think there is (obviously - is there wasn't, this would be the shortest blog post ever wouldn't it!) - it's just about finding the ways that things can work for me. I suspect the first thing is to keep things brief, not overload myself (the "you can do 15 minutes of anything" approach) and to take things a day at a time. I wrote elsewhere recently "And everything else can wait" - and do you know, it really can! SO:

Lists: I know they work for me, but letting them get overly long is counter productive.
15 minute bursts: 15 minutes of tidying somewhere at home EVERY day I'm there.
Goals: Short lists of 5 items - nothing earth shattering but just things I want to get sorted. New items to go here mean a new list, and that list will never be more than 5 items long.
Wants: Things I'd LIKE to do, stuff for me. If it never happens, it doesn't matter.
Preparation: whether it's getting stuff ready for the morning (clothes etc) or batch cooking ahead of time.
Prioritisation: Key to organisation and getting things done, I guess?

My "Bullet-esque Journal" is going to help me here. (Yes I KNOW it's a fad, and I KNOW 90% of people will stop using them once it stops being trendy, I'm hoping that as it's a variation on the diary/notebook thing I've done for ages anyway, I'll be in that other 10%, OK? Humour me here!) I'm a visual person, and having stuff written out in a very easy to follow, visual way works far better for me than disjointed dates on a page with no room to elaborate on anything much. Plus I actually like writing, as opposed to typing - notebooks are a regular feature of my life. Of course I'm not following the rules - but as someone else pointed out we're pretty sure there aren't "Bullet Journal police" out there ready to pounce at every incorrect indicator or missing page number. Mine's sectioned (Yes, as I should probably be, before anyone else jumps in there!), a sort of diary bit, a "planning" section, somewhere for finances as that is a regular thing I use a notebook for, and a bit for general notes and to-do stuff.

Weekly pages are just that - a page, with room for planned "stuff", a meal plan, stuff that needs to be booked and a SHORT to do list. It can't get longer than that as that's the space available for it - simple, yes? I'm also allocating a page per month to keep track of the bigger picture, and a "forward planning" grid of 12 blocks which will help to keep track of things planned for next year, thus removing some of the panic associated with potential double-bookings.

I need to remember that I don't have to do it all, that sometimes the path of least resistance is the easiest path to take. Sometimes, "enough" is absolutely fine. My home doesn't have to be worthy of a "Homes and Gardens" spread, it just has to be somewhere I want to go home to on a cold night. I need to remember to set aside time to organise myself, not just to try to hit everything head on. I've got 8 months until the airshow season gets up to speed again - is that enough time to develop habits that I may be able to continue even when I'm busy, I wonder? 

Frugal Friday

Remember that frugal thing? Well we're still doing it. It's like I said a while back though - the more it becomes a way of life, the more it becomes difficult to think of things to say about it. It's just what we do. We have relaxed a wee bit on things as time has moved on - although we've always been inclined to "go out and do stuff" even within the constraints of paying off every penny we can against the mortgage - there has always been that quality of life balance, as we recognised from the start that while if you're in debt (by which I mean mortgage, credit cards, overdrafts or loans) then cutting back everything you can is a great way of dealing with it, there's also the risk you end up burning out and saying "sod it" too.

I dipped in to Cass's "Frugal Family" blog recently though, and her "50 ways you can save" post gave me an idea, so here I am, first time in a while for one of these on a Friday...

My "50 ways" are split into sections - centered around things we've done, and how we worked to make our money work as well as we could for those things. Even if you're not scratching around for every penny, we all work hard for our money so it's only right that we should make the most of it.

10 tips for Travel:
We live just a few miles from Stansted airport, so the temptation to whizz off for a long weekend is very much there. Our next trip is a couple of days in Dublin, and was actually a fairly last minute decision, not the best basis on which to keep costs down, but we still did our best!
- Book flights as early as you can, particularly with budget airlines
- Be flexible - our original plan was to hire a car for two days, however we were going to get no change from £65 for this. Instead we've bought travelpasses which should cover us for ALL our travel while we're there and have cost us E10 (no Euro symbol on this keyboard!) each. Bargain!
- Likewise, parking at Stansted was going to be pricey due to the short-notice - but we can park at our local station for the weekend for £5, and the train will cost us about £14 return.
- A hotel a short distance out can save you cash! If you're happy to spend 30 minutes on a bus, train or tram, you can be quids in, particularly in popular destinations
- for foreign trips, plan your spending. We've got one of Martin Lewis' ideal Credit Cards for overseas spending, so we'll be spending as much of what we need to as possible on that, and of course as ever it will be cleared off as soon as we get the bill. (It'll also earn us a little bit of cashback)
- Remember you'll need cash too - and work out how best to get it. Some credit/Debit cards allow you to withdraw free of charge, others make a charge, in which case you may be best to get your holiday money in advance. We'll also be raiding our roadkill pig to round up all the Euros that we've found in the street.
- online research is a lot cheaper than buying guidebooks for where you're going, and you often find snippets that the books miss, too.
- Similarly for general sightseeing info, older guidebooks bought from charity shops are still fine, just don't expect admission charges to places to be the same!
- If the place you're visiting has a great market then make use of it for food for an outdoor or hotel room picnic - it usually works out FAR cheaper than going out for a meal, and can taste every bit as good, or better!
- Pack light to save on baggage charges - I can do a weekend on hand luggage even when I need a full bag of camera gear by packing cleverly into the gaps around my kit, and stashing stuff into pockets. Remember also you can usually carry on an "airport shopping" bag - so a bottle of water bought airside means you can then load other stuff into that same bag.

10 tips to save at home:
- Monitor your electricity & gas use regularly - then if you see a sudden sharp spike you can work out what's caused it before it runs up a big bill
- set reminders on your phone to check you're on the best deal for utilities once a year or so
- Shop around for insurance renewals well in advance of the policies expiring - this reduces the temptation to just let them auto-renew.
- Hoovering regularly maintains carpets in good condition for longer, likewise, clean up spills as soon as they happen!
- Girls, when hair-washing, shampoo twice using just a 10p sized blob at most each time - first time concentrate on the roots, second time, the lengths. The first wash won't lather much, but that's fine, it's still cleaning! (Thanks to my lovely hairdresser friend Kate for this one!)
- putting your shampoo in a dispenser bottle not only looks nicer in your bathroom, but also means you're not so tempted to use too much
- When you think that toothpaste tube is empty, lay it on a flat surface and run your finger up from bottom to top to push up all the paste that's left in the tube
- Don't leave electrical items on standby unless you have to - things like your Sky Box will be a nuisance if you keep turning them off and on again, but TV's, radios and stereos can mostly go off at the switch to get rid of those power-sapping little red lights!
- If you're going away for more than a couple of days, think about what you can do to minimise power drain - the less electrical items left switched on, the safer your home in your absence, too!
- If you have an Economy7 meter, set timers to run things like your dishwasher, washing machine etc overnight (so long as it won't be antisocial to your neighbours to do so!), and use the thermostat on your hot water cylinder to heat that on the cheap rate, too

10 tips for shopping:
- The money mantra - Do I need it, will I use it, can I get it cheaper? - before you buy
- If you decide to buy it, can you go through a cashback site to earn a little something back?
- Look on the High Street, but if they won't price-match to online, don't hesitate to walk away, on big ticket items in particular
- For new electrical appliances, remember to check their energy usage - our new shower costs far less to run than the old one, which has covered the cost of running the new extractor and the heated towel rail
- Cashback credit cards - while they're not as lucrative as they were a couple of years ago, they ARE still out there. Just use them for purchases you'd make anyway, and pay off in full at the end of each month
- one for the photographers - there are a LOT of sites out there selling really good quality, well looked after second hand gear, the likes of MPB Photographic and CameraWorld also offer part-ex deals on the items you're replacing!
- Another one for the photographers - if you're set on buying new for a particular item, there is a cracking dedicated comparison site so you can see where the best UK deals can be had - check out camerapricebuster.co.uk
- A lot of us having things we buy regularly, from habit - but it's those costs that can mount up. A £2.30 latte every working day on your way to the office? That's a cool £500 over a year - now think what you could do with that amount of money.
- For food shopping, write a list, not only does it mean you don't forget things, it also means you get round the store faster as you don't have to keep backtracking!
- Apps/websites like MySupermarket are great if you have the option to shop at several different supermarkets - work out where is cheapest for which items and plan accordingly!

In the kitchen:
- batch cook and never use the oven for just one item!
- If your oven is electric, and your microwave has a combi/convection setting, it'll almost certainly be cheaper to use the micro than heating the main oven.
- Stock-take your fridge regularly to avoid waste
- Remember - slightly over-ripe fruit and some yogurt = a delicious (and expensive to buy) smoothie! Sometimes leftovers can be a delicious treat!
- If you're making a curry, bolognese, stew or chilli, always consider padding it out to make an additional portion or two which can be frozen as a "home made" ready meal.
- a packet of gnocchi in the larder, butter in the fridge and some fresh herbs in pots outside, can help avoid the temptation of a trip to the takeaway because you've got "nothing in for dinner!"
- plan your meals to use up anything you have left over from the previous week
- PLAN YOUR MEALS!! (Seriously, even a rough plan of meals you enjoy and some basic ingredients always to hand can make all the difference)
- keep the kitchen tidy and stay on top of washing up - if it's a nice environment, and you don't have to "clear the decks" before you can do anything, you'll be far more inclined to cook in it - that equals less impromptu takeaways!
- If you can afford it, and enjoy it, plan in a takeaway every so often - this journey is NOT about depriving yourself of everything fun. BUT, give thought to what takeaways you really love, and what you could create at home for just-as-good results - for us it's fish & chips, chip-shop ones are incomparable!

10 tips to boost your savings:
- If you see money on the floor, pick it up. There's no shame in it and it's NOT beneath you. If someone else doesn't want it, you may as well have it!
- When you log in to check your online banking, take any odd pennies from the balance of your current account(s) and transfer them to a dedicated savings account - not enough each time to notice, but it does mount up! At the end of a year use the money for something lovely.
- Each time you manage to make a saving on a utility bill, so your monthly Direct Debit amount drops, set a bank-transfer to send the saving into a savings account. As you make further savings, increase the amount of the transfer accordingly. We currently have £96 a month going to savings just from having done this for a few years!
- Work out a monthly budget and stick to it - if you should have money left over at the end of the month, but you don't, keep a spending diary to work out why!
- Budget to save if you possibly can - if you should have money spare at the end of the month then budget to move it straight to savings before you're tempted to spend it!
- Check what savings accounts your bank offers for day to day savings, but be prepared to look further afield for larger amounts. In any event it makes sense to get the best interest you can. Nationwide currently offers a regular saver account which pays 5% for its first 12 months
- If you use an ISA, keep your eye on its interest rate - rates have dropped across the board since the Personal Savings Allowance was brought in but there are still deals to be had.
- If your current account pays interest, learn when it arrives and as soon as it has, transfer it to savings.
- Pigs rule, OK! Piggy Banks are the coolest thing - so drag that small change out of your purse, wallet or pocket, and go feed a pig!
- If you use TopCashBack or Quidco, and get your cashback paid by BACS, transfer it straight to savings as soon as it hits your account so you see a benefit from your savvy shopping, ratyher than it just getting frittered away!

All of the above are tried and tested by us - I'm not a fan of putting stuff in here that we can't be pretty sure works. Yes there's merits in looking at changing bank, and getting a cash incentive to do so, but we've been with our current account provider for, well, forever, actually, in my case, and we love their customer service and that they are a building society, not a bank. They do accounts that suits us. We have a branch in town where we can see someone if we need to. So we won't be changing, no matter how much cash someone wants to give us. Yes we could get TV, Phone & Broadband cheaper than Sky, but they give us the service we want, for a price we can afford (with regular haggling!) so I won't be urging you to change there, either. A lot of this money saving lark is about finding what works for you, and not being over-influenced by other people's accounts of living on dry bread and water, wearing all your clothes rather than heating the house, and having a cold shower just once a week to save on heating the water. Between you and me, most of them probably aren't practising what they preach, anyway! ;-)

Robyn

We did it...

...finally, 13 years after moving into our flat, we took the plunge and got the bathroom sorted out. when I say "sorted out" - the builder who did the work asked on arrival exactly what we wanted done and the answer was "everything" - so everything it was - quite literally floor to ceiling and even most of the walls.

The issue we had with the bathroom from the start was that while it wasn't to our taste (far from it, in fact!) it was liveable-with. Once we'd got the previous occupants' years of neglect off the toilet, basin and bath that was. Even when the floor developed a hole, we learned to step over it and walk round it rather than be brave enough to actually commit to doing something about it. Over the years we've gradually put together ideas, thoughts and plans. That bathroom has been on our "to do" list for a VERY long while, and finally after a chat with a lovely friend a few months back (his take on it was "for goodness sake just DO IT - you'll talk about it forever!"), we took a deep breath and put the wheels in motion, getting the lovely Dave-The-Builder (he SO should have been called Bob!) to come and look, and quote, and then go ahead with the job.

The biggest issues with the old room (discounting the blue suite, and the hole in the floor already mentioned), were the size - the room is pretty much tiny, although still astonishingly bigger than the bathroom in our old place which just ludicrously small - and the lack of storage. There was a vanity unit under the sink but it was essentially one big cupboard, so it made finding anything in there extremely difficult and when you pulled one thing out, there was a tendency for domino-effect to kick in as lots of other things that you didn't want, followed the first. We stuck a set of wooden IKEA drawers on the window sill for odds and ends but that blocked a lot of light and didn't help much on the storage front, either. It also had a tendency to get terribly damp - the 1980's polystyrene ceiling tiles didn't help with that and were truly impossible to keep clean. Everything gradually turned black with mildew and as fast as you cleaned it off, more took hold. The double-glazed window had all its units blown - effectively meaning that it was no longer double-glazed, and the cistern on the loo was getting slower and slower to fill.

We decided from the start that if we were going to do it, we were going to do it right - no cutting corners to save costs, that while it might not be cheap it WOULD end up as we wanted it, and as it would best work for us. We discovered early on that there were ways of making savings too - for example the taps - we looked endlessly for the "right" thing, and finally found a set in one of the DIY warehouses for just under £200 for the pair - basin mixer and bath mixer - but looking online found an identical set from elsewhere for half the cost. The shower - again seen in real-life, but bought online saved us nearly £100. we could easily have spent three times as much on the plain white tiles for the majority of the walls, than we did - but you know, the 55p-a-tile ones looked every bit as nice, and the very first floor tiles that we actually liked enough to put on our floor turned out to cost us a grand total of £25.76 for the entire floor! Those savings in turn meant that when we DID need to spend a bit extra, we did it without flinching. These...

...for example - our gorgeous mosaic tiles. £135's worth  of gorgeous mosaic tiles, to be exact - BUT they were exactly what we wanted, and they look stunning! (they look even better now they're grouted in, too!) Size limitations meant that we were struggling to fit in anything more than a 2-door vanity originally, but I knew for sure that a while ago I'd seen one that had the layout we wanted AND fitted the gap, so I dug around on the internet until I turned it up.

Dave-The-Builder too had some great ideas to offer - it was his suggestion to paint the top half of the biggest wall in a very soft pale grey, for example, and also to continue the splashback of mosaic right across behind the loo, not just behind the sink. He also built the superb recess above the bath, meaning that shampoo bottles etc no longer need to sit on the edge of the bath getting in everyone's way and occasionally falling over and landing painfully on your toes...

This is the first serious job we've had done on the flat - and we've learned a lot from it - that a really good craftsman is worth his weight in gold, for example, Dave came to us as a recommendation and he's been brilliant. We ended up with the job going ahead quicker than we'd expected though - and that has caused some issues - basically I spent every spare second in the first week running round sourcing things, googling stuff and trying to get everything organised so it would be ready when needed. That when you live in a flat, having a garage which can be used for storage is a godsend - lord knows what we'd have done without that. That Topps Tiles online ordering system with "collection from store" means you have to wait longer for your tiles than had you opted for their free delivery to home. (Yes, that one caused a delay). That actually checking that that the Charcoal Grey rubbish bin you've ordered from the store IS Charcoal Grey, and not realising three hours after you get it home that, in fact, it's purple, saves a lot of time later. (No, it wasn't in a box, I was just so frazzled that I didn't even think about it. Credit to Dunelm Mill for superb customer service to sort that one out though!). Above all we've learned that attention to detail, and trusting your instincts, go a long way - the thing we're most pleased about is that we planned the room out from scratch ourselves, and it's all come together looking exactly as we hoped it would.

Robyn